


In Which The Heroine Makes A Sorrowful Departure, And Then, Miraculously, Returns

by mybffwonderwoman



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, F/F, Femlock, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Genderswap, Post Reichenbach, Reichenbach Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybffwonderwoman/pseuds/mybffwonderwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johanna has been told a number of times in her life that sometimes you need a little distance to get a proper perspective on your problems.<br/>And, yeah, she’s been needing to take some time to really examine her frantically paced life and her frankly unfathomable best friend and maybe a little distance will shed some light on this mess.<br/>She just didn’t expect the distance necessary for clarity of mind to be the physical distance between the middle of a London road to the roof of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which The Heroine Makes A Sorrowful Departure, And Then, Miraculously, Returns

Afterwards, she will think about everything that went wrong.

Stupid, how stupid to honestly believe that the same woman who smirked and threw a CIA agent out of a window multiple times because he bruised Mrs. Hudson’s wrist would now, with everything on the line, brush off the last moments in that not-your-housekeeper’s life as insignificant.

And then for her, for Johanna to be just like everyone else– eager to disparage the younger Miss Holmes for her un-sentimentality (women should be warmer, don't you think?)- to dehumanize her best friend with two careless, angry words?

Much later, despondent, in a black suit not at all her style, and dulled by someone’s (Lestrade’s?) generosity with fine whiskey, Johanna will privately swear never to use the word “machine” again. It is perhaps a foolish gesture, oh, indubitably everything her former flat mate would distain– illogical, unlikely to be kept, meaningless to all but the dead.

But there’s no one’s around to voice dissent, is there? You lose that privilege when you jump off a building.

Four weeks after the casket is covered with dirt (ashes to ashes, dust to dust), a tremor will reemerge in Johanna’s hand as she stares at Ella’s impassive face and admits that yes, she’s glad she got to have that phone call. Because otherwise she’d be living with the knowledge that the last things she said to the woman she loved were unbearably hateful.

 

Johanna gets out of the taxicab, back from Baker Street, not nearly as scared as she ought to be. The call about Mrs. Hudson was a diversion and the world’s only consulting detective wasn’t fooled for a second. There must have a been a rhyme or reasoning to sending Johanna off like that, so she hurries back to the hospital for her next assignment.

She’s not afraid.

Until she’s on the phone and is instructed to look up.

There is only one assumption made when you see a lone figure on a ledge.

A jumper.

No.

Johanna trusts. Trusts that she is wrong. Because Johanna trusts the woman in the great coat to figure it out, whatever the puzzle is. Johanna trusts her to be much too proud of herself and her cheekbones to make herself into a sidewalk painting.

So the instinctual fear is wrong, then. It must be. (Suicidal, really, what was she thinking?) And if what she can hypothesize doesn’t make sense– if she sees, but doesn’t observe– then she will ask the simple question.

What is going on?

 

Afterwards, she can savor the fact that she wasn’t, in fact, wrong.

Oh, victory tastes like cyanide. (Which is not particularly flavorful, but lend her the metaphor.)

If she had thought– that’s the way all her sentences start now, don’t they– if she had thought that this was really it, the end of the line, that what was going to be said in the next minute would be all that would be left to cling to in the coming months, when she’d play the role of next of kin (instead of Brother Government), sorting through truckloads of papers in indecipherable, spidery penmanship, papers that long predate their friendship, well, then, she might have hit that little ‘record’ button before launching into the conversation.

See, Johanna’s memory will be shit.

It will take her twelve therapy appointments to admit that she cannot remember the exact words, the exact timbre of the voice on the other end of line.

It will be admitting that forgetfulness is another, less dramatic death.

It will be a thought that will make Johanna cry in a manner of which she will not be entirely proud.

 

When she hears, “I can’t come down so we’ll have to do it like this”, this is what Johanna’s brain says:

No no no no no no no no please no no stop it no no.

She begs to be told that she is fearing the wrong thing, that there is nothing that that little man could say– because that’s all he is, after all: a little man with a wicked grin in a smart suit, Westwood– that would make the cleverest woman she knows give up the ghost.

Johanna’s mind needs a reason to understand what is going on, something to help her comprehend the desolation in the low, familiar voice. Why, why, why, can this be about me, no, please don’t let it be about me, what I said, I take back every complaint, just get your impeccable self down here so I can kiss you–

Of course you learn what you want in the very minute it is about to be taken away.

 

Later, she will wonder how they wasted that much time.

Johanna, flitting from boyfriend to boyfriend, each gentleman severely underestimating exactly how tough a female army doctor is after a tour in Afghanistan and a second tour on London’s streets. One after another fail to understand how wizened she is, how eager for excitement for excitement’s sake.

All the while, that tall brunette was skirting around Matt in the morgue, warming up to– no, let’s be honest, flirting with– the petite 32-24-34 woman itching to dominate a whole country.

Hindsight. Twenty-twenty.

Oh, I was jealous here, she wanted my attention here.

 

Johanna is being told that she has been fooled.

She is not taking it well.

 

Later, she will use her shitty memory to replay that opening scene– the opening scene of her life, because really how was her PTSD pensioner’s nightmare a life– no, Johanna took her first breath when Mike Stamford took her to a lab and introduced her to another woman who happened to be in the midst of shopping around for a flat mate.

She will go through the story over and over again to prove a point.

Because that meeting was a surprise. There was no time to Google the details of one Johanna Watson’s personal history. No possibility for research. So what

Johanna is left with is a lie.

Who jumps off a building and lies about why they do it?

Johanna’s only friend, that’s who.

 

Everything is happening so–

Johanna doesn’t even process her hand rising up, mirroring the figure on the–

“Goodbye, Joh–”

 

Afterwards, she–

God.

 

In real time, when a body falls, there is no illusion of flying; there is only the swiftly approaching concrete.

It happens so fast.

You blink and you miss it, but don’t worry, Johanna doesn’t blink, she’s learned she can’t afford to blink on madcap adventures around London with a mad detective, she’s trained herself to see it all (within her narrow abilities), she doesn’t miss a thing.

She must be screaming something, her throat hurts so much.

A name.

This isn’t happening–

They were just running around handcuffed together, that was last night, wasn’t it–

 

Later, 1,095 days later, Johanna will be in the shower.

She will be in a bit of a hurry– rather important morning interview on the anniversary, what with the book, and the reinvestigation and ever-changing tide of public opinion (this time, in favor, finally in favor)– and she will make the assumption that the unexpected sound of footfalls in the stairs (slightly heard above the steady drilling of hot water) is a chauffeur come early (yes, Mycroft, alleviate the guilt however you wish).

She will holler something along the lines of, “I’ll be down in a couple of minutes, make yourself at home, thanks.”

When there is a knock on the bathroom door, Johanna will assume she wasn’t heard the first time around, and she will repeat herself.

Receding footsteps.

Good.

 

The biker.

The pavement.

Johanna can’t remember strapping on the armor, but her entire body feels like it's encased in iron.

Heavy and awful and cold.

Up and at ‘em.

Walk to the corner, walk to the sidewalk–

Johanna’s mouth is on autopilot, “I’m a doctor, I’m a friend, let me through–”

Oh, god, the blood.

Who kicked her knees out from under her?

She grasps a clammy wrist, limp, white, unstained by impact, and prays for vibrancy in the veins.

She gets nothing.

Other doctors. Better doctors. With a stretcher.

Some poor, compassionate woman wraps her arms around Johanna’s shaking shoulders.

When did I start crying?

Fuck.

 

Afterwards, Johanna will towel off. She will slip into a rather smart suit and skirt– a fashionable move dictated by the elder Holmes, the only remaining Holmes (oh, that thought still hurts, stings, burns three years later)– and apply the minimum make-up and ruffle her cropped, sandy hair, and stare herself down in the mirror.

She will perhaps murmur, “You can do it,” under her breath.

Tissues in the inside pocket (for the inevitable tear that will slide out once she is safely off-camera).

A cigarette (for sentimentality only; that particular coping mechanism made its entrance and exit during year two).

A wobbly smile.

Johanna will make a brave face and clatter down the stairs to meet her driver and go on her way.

 

Everyone arrives, arrives, and comes to a stop.

Lestrade, who by the end of the day, will be out of a job.

Anderson, who is struck dumb out of shock, not incompetence.

Donovan, who for all the world looks like she bears the weight of this suicide on her shoulders alone.

Johanna can hear the policewoman with the biting tongue wondering, What if I was wrong?

Johanna can hear the growing throng muttering, See, I was right.

Johanna doesn’t care either way.

Lestrade, weary and grey, greyer than ever before in his life, gently ushers Johanna into a squad car and he does not arrest her, even though she is technically wanted for assault.

 

Later, it will not be a driver standing awkwardly in the living room.

Too tall, slim, well-dressed for that line of the business, Johanna will be able to tell from behind (see, she did profit from those months in the trenches, she can do a little basic analysis when push comes to shove), and so she will give a little cough and let the stranger turn around and–

Oh.

 

Here is how it goes (year one): unemployment, employment, clinical depression.

 

In a living room in London, two women will stand and look at each other.

 

Here is how it goes (year two): take up smoking, quit smoking, date a nice man, break up with a nice man, forget to commemorate the day your best friend died, have a panic attack when you realize.

 

One of them (the taller one) will open her mouth to say something, and the other one (the sadder one) will say, “No.”

 

Here is how it goes (year three): get outraged about it all, write, write, guilt-trip others, guilt-trip self, look Lestrade in the eye, publish, move back to Baker Street.

 

Johanna will dart back up the stairs and get back in the shower again without taking off her clothes.

She will sit and let the water run off a suit she could never afford on a military pension and the woman from downstairs, lean and tired and happy to be home, will come join her army doctor on the floor of the shower and get soaked too.

 

Here is how it goes (now).

 

Afterwards, after three years of sleeping pills and weekly Ella and pity pints with Harry, when this awfulness comes to a close with the return of the owner of an all too familiar head of short black curls, Johanna remains confounded by the fall.

Once dry, she searches those pale arms and legs for remnants of the sidewalk trauma that has haunted every dream (except those having to do with Afghanistan, and even those, sometimes, slyly have included that persistent detective).

Johanna does not find these mementos.

Oh, she finds bruises and cuts and burns, but these are from killers and thugs and arsonists, not from a twenty story drop, and it is this that makes her want to add another injury to the gallery. What’s infuriating isn’t the disappearance, nor the all-too-self-satisfactory return, but the trick of it all.

The magic trick.

Look! I fell and I didn’t even hurt myself.

Johanna thinks about punching her best friend in the face, but that seems rather expected, so she opts for swift shovel hook to the stomach.

And maybe a kiss after that.

And then, another punch.


End file.
